"So you'll do anything, I see," the genie repeated. "You'll even sell that house you bought for your wife (whom the whole town knows you're cheating on) and give back all the money you embezzled from your manager here at this magic shop, which was apparently owned by my former master?"
Ashmael looked into her eyes gulped.
"Ah, see?" she said with a squint. "I told you I could see your true nature. I thought I recognized this place from somewhere. It's a good thing you told me your name--well, your human name, anyway. I'm not the only one who calls you a cur in this town."
Ashmael could feel his nose swelling, and he was starting to smell things he had never smelled before. He was even starting to understand what some of the scents were. For one thing, he could smell emotions: his own fear, and the genie's condescending and mischievous attitude toward him. He could also smell the dried sexual fluids from when he would bring his one-night-stands here on evenings when he didn't want to go home toward his wife. Seeing the bulge of a black-furred muzzle starting to build up in front of him caused a knot to form in his stomach. So much for the genie changing him back!
"No, p-p-please!" he stammered. "You can't do this to me. It's n-not natural! I can't BLAAH--*whine*"
The petty womanizer's pathetic speech was interrupted by his longer, flatter tongue flopping out of his mouth and flapping around aimlessly. He could still feel it growing, long enough to keep dangling far and wide outside a muzzle that was still getting longer as he watched with his eyes crossed.
"You know, you really are a good beggar," said the genie. "Some humans have a soft spot for that kind of thing, and some of them are willing to throw scraps to the animals they pass by. You might eat fairly well. Some of them might even take you in as a pet, with that innocent look of yours."
That's when Ashmael truly understood that not only did the genie want to make him a dog, but she was also going to leave him alone as a stray. No one else even knew he was here! How could he make anyone else who might see him as a dog understand that he was a human? He tried to reason with the genie again, but he couldn't make any words and was reduced to barks, whines and whimpers. He flailed his arms and legs, flexing hands that were getting shorter and kicking feet that were getting thinner. As long as she kept him floating like this, there was no escape! He took a deep breath and held it, trying to stop the increasing number scents from distracting him while he tried to discover a way out of this mess. Instead, he discovered that scents don't just disappear a dog's nose when it stops sniffing.
Ashmael realized he couldn't move his thumbs anymore, for they had been reduced to little useless growths on his wrists. He wanted to get control of his tongue to try to say something, but it moved in ways no human tongue could, and he couldn't move it in the ways he was used to. His voice no longer sounded human anyway. He was forced to give out a very canine-sounding whine when an intense pressure built up in his backbone. The pressure soon found a way out, at the bottom of his spine: first his tailbone felt loose, and then it no longer felt like just a single bone. 'No, not that,' he thought, 'Anything but that!' The rest of the pressure forced its way out all at once, making him yelp. Then he got dizzy at the sense of his own vertebrae dangling down near his ankles. He found himself taking stock of some new muscles down there and felt something wave and bend behind him. He refused to look back and see what it was. Even so, he couldn't help feeling more and more helpless, he couldn't help smelling his own fear and humiliation deep inside his long muzzle, and he couldn't help bending his new tail underneath him to point directly towards his face.
"Aw, poor puppy," the genie feigned concern, watching Ashmael tuck his tail like a scolded dog for the first time. "Let's get you out of this mean scary place." She snapped her fingers, and before he could even bark, he was transported instantly outside. He ran to the shop entrance on all fours, claws clicking on the sidewalk as he went, and jumped up to scratch at the locked door and bark to be let in. It was useless: the shop was closed, no one else was in there but the genie, and no one else would have recognized his black-muzzled brown body as a former human anyway. Instead of leaving through the door, the genie teleported somewhere unknown, and when Ashmael smelled that she was no longer in there, he perked his ears to the silence and realized he was on his own now.